Japanese New Year's Eve Ritual: TV Song Contest

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN,

Published: January 1, 1992

TOKYO, Wednesday, Jan. 1—
Fifteen minutes before midnight, one of the titanic battles of 1991 came to an end on television as the Reds triumphed over the Whites. Most of Japan was said to be watching.

In a nation of many rituals, the New Year in Japan is in a class by itself. It is time for praying at shrines, sending out greeting cards, putting up decorations of pine branches, bamboo and straw in front of houses and pounding gobs of rice into a gooey edible paste called mochi.

But few rituals are more practiced than the "Red and White Song Contest" on NHK, Japan's publicly owned television station. After 42 years on the air, this annual New Year's Eve marathon song festival has become the most watched television program in Japan.

The Red and White contest is to Japan what the Guy Lombardo orchestra and Times Square are to the United States, an indispensable part of the festivities and a link with the past. This year, the show went on for four and a half hours with 56 performers before a squealing and sometimes weeping live audience.

The show is a wild pastiche of Japanese taste: glittering women singing traditional love songs, kimono-clad singers and performers of traditional Japanese instruments, a group singing Okinawan folk music, teen-age idols, comedians and an orchestra playing a movement from a Mozart symphony. Blue Tights and a Mozart Wig

The mop-haired teen-age idol known as Kan sang his hit song, "Love Will Win," dressed in spangly blue tights and a white wig like Mozart's -- Japan has loved saluting the 200th anniversary of his death this year -- improbably surrounded by cherubic children and several people dressed as cuddly animals.

Another singer, Sachiko Kobayashi, wore a gown of feathers and sequins that opened up to make her look like a giant bird. As she sang, she rose from the stage flapping her arms and finished the song as she flew away suspended by a wire. The costume cost $800,000, the audience was told.

The concept of the show is that every performer or group, including some of the most famous in Japan, is part of a team, Red for the women and White for the men. At the end, the studio audience joins with selected viewers and a panel of judges to decide which team wins.

Producers of the show acknowledge that the team concept is somewhat artificial but popular in a country that loves fierce competition. "For this program, we feel we always need a clear format to make it into a big event," said Akira Yoshigi, the executive producer. "It should be very simple and easy to understand. That's what makes people watch year after year."

At one time, the Red and White contest racked up an audience share of 70 to 80 percent. But lately the share has been a little more than 50 percent, which means it is probably watched by at least 70 million people. From time to time, critics say the show is an anachronism, and occasionally an NHK executive is quoted in the press as saying it may be time to retire it. Each time, such comments bring a flood of protests from loyal viewers who would not think of doing anything else on New Year's Eve. Gossip of Suicide and Nudity

So pervasive is the Red and White contest that in the week before New Year's, all of Japan's popular weekly magazines turn themselves over to mindless gossip about the show. One weekly criticized the show this week for concentrating on natsumero, or songs of nostalgia about the old days.

Another magazine reported on the anger of a singer who was left out of the show for the third time in a row, apparently because of a suicide attempt some years ago. Still another speculated that the popular actress Rie Miyazawa was blackballed because she appeared nude in a picture book this year.

It is not easy even to get on the program, and singers lobby frenetically all year to appear. NHK chooses the lineup only after surveying people in a poll and poring over charts of record sales.

"Everyone in Japan wants to be on this show," Mr. Yoshigi said. "If you ask me how long it will be on the air, I can only answer that it will be on as long as people demand it. We don't see any signs of that demand ending."

To lure younger viewers, the show last year brought in Cyndi Lauper and Paul Simon, but Mr. Yoshigi said they actually did not go over too well among the mainstay middle-age audiences of Japan. This year, Andy Williams was on hand to sing "Moon River," for the White team, of course.

Not to be outdone, the winning Reds had Sarah Brightman singing "Music of the Night" from "The Phantom of the Opera," by her former husband, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Photo: The "Red and White Song Contest" is to Japan what the Guy Lombardo orchestra and Times Square are to the United States, an indispensable part of the New Year's festivities. The participants above rehearsed for this year's televised contest, which pits men against women. (Itsuo Inouye for The New York Times)